A cheesy heist-on-a-plane type thriller, notable for lots of familiar cast members but a real low budget which gives the whole thing a truly fake feel. The hero's a wrestler, coerced by guest star Kelsey Grammar into pulling off the ultimate heist, but what follows are a string of sub DIE HARD action sequences and a ridiculous twist that sees this veering off into shot-on-video horror territory. Denise Richards has a tiny cameo and there are various other B-faces dotted around, but it's not good.

Writer & director Andrew Lawrence's "Money Plane" fares better as a crime comedy than a serious, straightforward melodrama. This lofty aerial heist caper set aboard a casino jet cruising through international airspace is a big-budget blockbuster done on an abysmal shoe-string budget. As underworld kingpin Darius Emmanuel Grouch III, Kelsey Grammar sticks around longer than our hero's right-hand man Thomas Jane, while former James Bond heroine Denise Richards makes a cameo appearance. She shows up at the start as the hero's wife and then she reappears momentarily after the smoke has cleared to fool around with the family dog. The premise of Lawrence's airborne outing had solid, surefire potential. Indeed, nobody has undertaken such an intriguing premise. Mind you, "Money Plane" amounts to little more than a take-off on crime movies about shady gambling ships anchored beyond the twelve-mile coastal limit.

"Black Water" scribes Tyler W. Konney and Richard Switzer concocted the story, and claustrophobic thrillers are their specialty. "Black Water," starring Jean Claude Van-Damme and Dolph Lundgren, took place aboard a submarine doubling as a black site prison. "Better Than Love" scenarist Tim Schaaf adapted the Konney & Switzer idea with director Lawrence. If you decide to watch this outlandish escapade, you'll probably hoist a skeptical eyebrow at its avowed budget. Supposedly, the filmmakers spent $50 million to produce this anemic inventory of clichés where curtains serve as backdrops to conceal the threadbare production values. According to Wikipedia, the filmmakers encountered difficulties during the troubled pre-production phrase. Initially, they sought to shoot the film on location in Romania and Toronto. Lawrence and his cast and crew ended up lensing the histrionics in Baton Rouge. No, you don't see that $50 million on-screen. Nevertheless, despite its dubious budget, a better-than-average movie lies somewhere within this routine hokum.

Former WWE wrestler Adam "Edge" Copeland, sporting a man-bun and a beard, stars as tough guy Jack Reese. He has assembled an elite crew of thieves, and each boasts skills that Jack exploits to maximum advantage in this fast-paced, 82-minute caper. Married to a stay-at-home wife, Sarah (Denise Richards of "The World Is Not Enough"),Jack and she are raising a bright little girl, Claire (newcomer Emma Gordon),and Claire lives blissfully without a care in the world. Jack enjoys reading bedtime stories to his daughter about Robin Hood's antics of taking from the rich to reward the poor. Happily, the villains never harm a hair on her sweet little head. Maintaining vigilance over Claire is Jack's old friend, a former Air Force fighter pilot ace named Harry (Thomas Jane of "The Punisher"),who knows a thing or two about arming a drone with an automatic weapon. "Angel Has Fallen" depicted the first death-dealing drones spitting lethal barrages of lead, but this one is far less sophisticated.

As the narcissistic, cigar-chomping Darius 'The Rumble' Grouch III, Kelsey Grammar chews what little scenery this film doesn't conceal behind curtains with his eccentric gusto. Grouch demands Jack and his cohorts compensate him for the loss of a $40-million-dollar painting he had hired them to steal. When Jack and company learned the work of art, entitled "The Disturbing Duckling," which Grouch wanted them to thieve, was mysteriously missing from the museum, they aborted before the authorities could nab them. Now, Grouch orders them to loot a flying casino of $1 billion in digital cryptocurrency. Meantime, Jack and company can split the millions in cash stashed in the vault. Jack needs a pile of dough because he has huge gambling debts to pay off. Our hero assures his accomplices their individual shares will make this their 'last job.' Of course, Jack's optimism about this prospect turns out to be premature.

Grouch briefs Jack about the casino plane. First, no security cameras are allowed aboard the aircraft to safeguard the guests' anonymity. These guests constitute the wealthiest and wickedest underworld denizens. Appropriately, Jack masquerades as a notorious human trafficker. Nobody has ever seen him, but they admire his notorious reputation. Second, the airline exercises a zero-tolerance policy about cheating. The three members of Jack's crew assume different roles. Feisty Isabella Voltaic (Katrina Norman of "Burlesque"),the team's token female, loves to maim and kill her adversaries. When an odious passenger draws her blood first, Isabella relishes the moment and then annihilates her opponent without a qualm. She infiltrates the ranks as a flight attendant, while Jack and his African American techno-genius, Trey Peterson (Patrick Lamont Jr. of "True You"),enter as gambling fanatics. Ironically, Trey turns out to be quite lucky as a gambler. Peterson reminded me of a Kevin Hart wannabe. The third crew member, Iggy (director Andrew Lawrence),finds himself stranded on terra firma where he will collect the crypto-currency download. Predictably, he discovers his role in the heist comes with certain risks, too.

The mediocre production values sabotage what could have overshadowed airborne thrillers such as the Harrison Ford classic "Air Force One" (1997) and the Nicolas Cage thriller "Con Air" (1997). Sadly, Lawrence makes it far too easy for our heroes to subdue their adversaries and pull off the heist without enough hair-raising close calls. For example, only one man patrols the server our heroes plunder, and Isabella disposes of him as easily as plucking daisy pedals. One of the best scenes pits Jack against the co-pilot, a man much larger than Jack, in horribly cramped quarters. These two slug it out like two gorillas in a closet, and the outcome is messy. Eventually, Lawrence and co-scribe Tim Schaaf slip in some interesting surprises that complicate things considerably for everybody, especially the villainous Grouch who enjoys a "Scarface" send-off. Meantime, "Money Plane" serves up some unsavory events for the gamblers, and they wager large sums. One scene treats a suicidal game of Russian roulette between gamblers like tactless comic relief. Mind you, "Money Plane" needed a bigger budget to fly higher. Whatever the case, Kelsey Grammar looks like he had the time of his life.

Seriously the acting of every single actor is soooo bad that i cannot help imagine them as po*nstars gathered to make a movie.